Please join us at Little Big Man Gallery to visit an exhibition of new work by the contemporary Japanese artist Nobuyoshi Araki, followed by a group exhibition at 365 Mission Gallery.

When viewing Araki’s vast new series, Tombeau Tokyo, it’s clear that his fertile imagination is squarely focused on the varying stages of life and death (the name itself, Tokyo Tomb in French, gives us clear indication). This monumental corpus is comprised of a vast series of still lifes, but perhaps the French term is more fitting—nature morte, or dead nature in literal translation. In the Oxford English Dictionary, a further extended figurative definition is given for the French term, which sums up the mood precisely: “sickly; lifeless.” While lifeless might be a step too far as Araki’s vitality is present, it’s clearly in a state of decay. Where once Araki worshiped at the altar of Eros—the Greek god of sexual desire—he now appears before Thanatos, the god of death.

Sunlight arrives only at its proper hour is a group exhibition that touches upon spiritual, metaphysical and surrealist themes as well as the darker side of LA counterculture in relation to theatricality, science fiction, alchemy and time. The title is borrowed from a line in Henri Michaux’s poem “I Am Writing to You from a Distant Country” (published in 1938), an otherworldly text about alternate realities. Works included span from the historical to the contemporary.

Artists: Yuji Agematsu, Nancy Arlen, Jeremy Anderson, Hans Bellmer, Bill Bollinger, Lee Bontecou, Robert Breer, Dan Burkhart, Cameron, Nicolas Ceccaldi, Magalie Comeau, Tony Conrad, Jay DeFeo, Michaela Eichwald, Agustin Fernandez, Terry Fox, Ilka Gedő, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Bill Hayden, Matt Hoyt, Steve Keister, Mike Kelley, William Leavitt, Lee Lozano, Robert Mallary, Harold Mendez, Henri Michaux, Eric Orr, Tom Rankin, Deborah Remington, John Singer Sargent, Michael E. Smith, and Unica Zürn Rubinoff